Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Speaker, when the Minister does do the checking, in terms of the defibrillators in the community arenas for community functions, can she also check to see if people other than her staff under the Department of Health and Social Services are trained, such as recreation facilitators or people, also, who just recently got hired on from the hamlet, if they can get trained if they haven’t yet been trained in terms of First Aid or on how to use these defibrillators?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the question on safety standards for community arenas. I’m not too sure who I should be asking, which Minister. I want to ask the Ministers, in terms of the safety standards, in terms of the defibrillators in the arenas. I know of some instances in my region where there was some medical attention and there were no defibrillators. I want to ask the Minister if there are defibrillators in the community arenas.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do thank the Member for the reference of my home community of Tulita. I also represent four other communities in the Sahtu where there is certainly much need for these types of programs. For example, the family support centre in Hay River receives $430,000 to reduce the incidence of family violence. The Alison McAteer House receives $600,000 for their programs. The NWT Council for the Disabled receives $300,000. We want to look at those types of dollars for the Sahtu in order to coordinate these types of dollars for families in the communities to help with the goals...

The Minister indicated there are other sources that can be tapped into of NGO-type of funding by the band councils or regional corporations. I want to ask, I know there was a request by the band council of Tulita for emergency shelters to the Minister, but we just couldn’t get $10,000 for the community and now we have to wait again for another fiscal year. These type of situations that we run into we have to get our foot into the door with NGOs. I asked the Minister about working with the health boards in the communities to establish strong NGO support in our communities where we can get the...

In terms of showing some progress in the near future, is there a time frame between the two parties and seeing if we can come to an arrangement that is satisfactory that would put this issue to rest until a long-term solution is found?

I look forward to if there is any type of update the Minister can give later on.

Mr. Speaker, I spoke to the chair of the Elders Council, Mr. Paulette, and he said that they are very much in support of this. Actually, after we had our discussion here in the House, Mr. Paulette called me and said that the jam is in terms of the bureaucracy in the system and how to get this traditional food into the system. So that’s why I’m asking the Minister if she can have some discussions with her officials to clear the way to get the issue of the fish into the hospitals, in terms of probably within a month...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Interesting response in terms of the health benefits. In my Member’s statement I talked about the various programs the federal government has for aboriginal people, the GNWT has for the Metis people, and now we’re talking about the non-aboriginal health benefits here. I would like to ask the Minister, if we don’t do anything, would these benefits that are extended exceed the other benefits that people have such as the ones that we’re talking about, the ones who do have the ability to pay. That’s what I’m looking at in this program here. Will that exceed what the...

I want to ask the Minister a technical question. How much does it cost the government to top up payments for people who already have 80 percent coverage of their drugs and earn large incomes?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I want to talk about the supplementary health benefits. I know that some of the Members may be surprised that I’m talking about this, because the Sahtu communities are a majority of aboriginal communities and maybe the supp health benefits programs are not such a great concern.

Sahtu people have access to First Nation and Inuit benefit programs administrated by Health Canada. Most aboriginal people consider that this obligation flows from our treaty rights as First Nations people. The provision of a medicine chest is an obligation of the federal government, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank Mr. Bromley for bringing this motion to the floor. I certainly will be supporting it. I would like to speak about the elimination of handling fees for the collection of milk containers under the NWT Beverage Container Program, Mr. Speaker.

Under the existing NWT Beverage Container Program, when residents return their beverage containers, they receive a refund. Their refund is only about 60 percent of the amount the resident paid for the container. Some of the remaining funds go to support environmental issues.

We know that drinking pop is bad for our population...